Five days down, 95 to go!

Hey everyone!
Theres so much to share, I dont know where to start!  Firstly, excuse my punctuation, the french keyboard is slightly different from the ones back home and ive been having trouble finding the apostrophe!  At the moment I am sitting inside a small internet cafe on a paved street nearby my house.  Although I should have been expecting it, the very limited number of paved roads here was one of the first things that suprised me when I arrived.  Although our house is in a fairly nice, upper middle class neighborhood (by Burkina Faso standards) the roads all around our house are very bumpy, unpaved, and filled with gravel, rocks, and trash. 

Backing up a little bit, my friend Kara and I spent four days exploring Paris before we flew down to Africa.  It is such an beautiful city filled with famous landmarks and culture.  While I marvled at and appreciated the priceless artifacts and art I am lucky enough to have seen, what really struck me about the city was just how ancient it is.  We had dinner a couple of nights on a street near our hotel called the rue Mouffetard, which apparently was originally a highway leading to rome when paris was a young city.  And here we were, walking down the street, finding restaurants, and eating dinner with crowds of other people however many years later!  We definitely crammed a fair amount of activities into our short stay!  After meeting up at the airport and checking into our hotel, Kara and I found lunch, climbed the Arc de Triomphe, walked down the Champs Elysee (which literally has the biggest Sephora in the world), and had dinner before we crashed into bed.  The next day we visited Notre Dame and climbed the bell tower (which was probably one of my favorite things that we did) and after lunch spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Louvre.  Now neither of us had a watch and three times we asked different guards "what time is it?" or "quelle heure est-t-il?" which is what both of yus were taught in school.  Not one person we asked could understand our french and then we would have to do the tourist thing of pointing to our wrists.  Needless to say both of us felt very stupid.  Wednesday we went to Versailles at the very beginning of the day so it was almost empty, which made it seem almost ghostly and then that night we took a boat tour on the Seine.  The last day we went all the way up the Eiffel tour after having really yummy brioche, visited Sainte Chapelle, and walked around the Musee DOrsay.  My internet is about to run out so Ill have to update this blog about Africa soon!  Its really hot and muggy here but im adjusting, and only three mosquito bites so far!
Talk to you guys soon!
Caroline